French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the Russian "hybrid threat against Europeans and against France has intensified" and that he had ordered the government to prepare a plan to protect France's critical infrastructure and its "most sensitive" defence industry and technology sites against drone and cyber-attacks. Macron spoke after meeting presidential hopefuls and party leaders at the Elysee Palace in Paris, ahead of the April-May election, according to ABC News Australia, which said the meeting was held in the palace's crisis room and included a briefing on confidential French intelligence assessments. Arab News reported that Macron made the comments before travelling to the UN General Assembly the following week, while BBC News said the leaders met to discuss the security impact of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Macron also said France would keep supporting Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, and vowed that Russian attacks on French soil "will not go unanswered", without elaborating.
Macron orders government plan to protect French critical infrastructure against Russian hybrid attacks
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the Russian "hybrid threat against Europeans and against France has intensified" and that he had ordered the government to prepare a plan to protect France's critical infrastructure and its "most sensitive" defence industry and technology sites against drone and cyber-attacks. Macron spoke after meeting presidential hopefuls and party leaders at the Elysee Palace in Paris, ahead of the April-May election, according to ABC News Australia, which said the meeting was held in the palace's crisis room and included a briefing on confidential French intelligence assessments. Arab News reported that Macron made the comments before travelling to the UN General Assembly the following week, while BBC News said the leaders met to discuss the security impact of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Macron also said France would keep supporting Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, and vowed that Russian attacks on French soil "will not go unanswered", without elaborating.
According to ABC News Australia, the Elysee meeting was attended by the heads of France's foreign and domestic intelligence services, Nicolas Lerner of the DGSE and Celine Berthon of the DGSI, along with more than a dozen presidential hopefuls and other senior politicians, including centrists Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal and Jordan Bardella, head of the far-right National Rally. The National Rally's presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who is leading in the polls, and the hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon did not attend, the outlet reported.
Macron said the purpose of the Russian actions was "to intimidate us and to derail the effort to support the Ukrainians", adding that "the consequence will be the opposite" and that "we are not intimidated, because we know that what is at stake today in Ukraine is our security". He said France's interior minister had met regional prefects to step up vigilance in response to the Russian hybrid attacks, according to ABC News Australia and Arab News.
ABC News Australia described hybrid attacks as activities that fall below the threshold of open warfare and have included drone flights near sensitive sites, airspace violations and cyberattacks. BBC News described hybrid warfare as a loose term for non-military methods such as cyberattacks, sabotage or misinformation intended to pressure and destabilise an adversary, often carried out through proxies, and said Russia always denies involvement despite what it described as growing evidence to the contrary.
Both ABC News Australia and BBC News referred to a drone incident at Leipzig airport in Germany that Berlin has blamed on Moscow; ABC News Australia said the European Union stated it bore all the hallmarks of "state-sponsored terrorism", while BBC News described it as "last month's drone attack". ABC News Australia reported that Berthon, France's top domestic spy, made a rare appearance at a business forum in August saying the Leipzig incident signalled that French companies could also be targeted.
BBC News reported that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Polish MPs on Thursday that Russian plans included strikes by drones and missiles on countries supporting Ukraine, that there was a "real risk" of such strikes on NATO territory, and that Moscow would then claim they were "accidental" in an attempt to split the alliance. BBC News also reported that last Sunday a Russian drone hit a passenger train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK prime minister Boris Johnson and senior European security officials had travelled along the same line, striking the train's engine at Yahodyn; Ukraine said all passengers had been evacuated minutes before the strike. It added that there have been several suspicious fires at defence facilities from Italy to Estonia, with some affected countries blaming Russia.
BBC News reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Russia does not plan to attack Europe, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned European nations against sending troops to Ukraine, which he said Russia would regard as a declaration of war, stating: "If Europe attacks Russia, it will be a completely different war, and it will be very short." On Friday, BBC News added, Russia reiterated its warning to the UK that any British military facilities in Ukraine used to strike Russian territory were "legitimate targets", reserving the right to take "necessary counter-measures" over what it called the UK's "fiercely confrontational stance regarding Ukraine" and its supply of drones and other weapon systems to Kyiv.
BBC News reported that Macron said the government had also been tasked with protecting energy-related critical infrastructure and announced that France would call a G7 meeting on energy and raise the question of gas stocks with the European Commission, saying the meeting would consider "options for a possible release or unlocking of strategic reserves". In a domestic context, BBC News said Macron urged candidates in next year's elections not to exploit public unease by blaming the government, but to acknowledge that fuel price inflation resulted from uncontrollable international circumstances. Both ABC News Australia and BBC News reported that Le Pen currently leads the polls for the April-May vote.
ABC News Australia reported separately that earlier this month a train carrying 186 passengers came off the rails in the northwestern French region of Normandy, injuring 44 people, and that a rail fragment weighing around 300 kilograms was found on the tracks. It said some politicians and police sources raised the possibility of sabotage, while French authorities stressed the need for caution.
Where sources differ
- ABC News Australia says Berlin blamed Moscow for the Leipzig airport incident "this month", while BBC News refers to "last month's drone attack on Leipzig airport"; the sources do not give a consistent date for the incident.
- BBC News says the Elysee meeting with party leaders discussed the security impact of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, while ABC News Australia describes it as a briefing on confidential French intelligence assessments of current security challenges; Arab News describes it only as a meeting with French political leaders.
- Arab News dates its report to Friday, 18 September 2026, and says Macron was due to head to the UN General Assembly the following week; ABC News Australia and BBC News place the comments relative to the April-May election without giving the same date or the UN trip.
- No source sets out the contents, scope, cost or timetable of the plan Macron says he ordered, beyond protecting critical infrastructure and the most sensitive defence industry and technology sites from drone and cyberattacks.
- No source establishes what form France's promised response to Russian shadow attacks would take; Macron said it would not go unanswered but did not elaborate.
- No source reports a Russian government response specifically to Macron's announcement; Moscow's reported position is limited to general denials of involvement in hybrid attacks and warnings about troop deployments and UK-supplied weapons.
- No source establishes responsibility for the Normandy derailment; French authorities urged caution and the sabotage suggestion came from unnamed politicians and police sources, according to ABC News Australia.
- No source reports a reason for the absence of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon from the Elysee briefing, or any comment from them on the meeting or on Macron's announcement.
- No source reports any statement from the French interior ministry, the DGSE or the DGSI about the announced plan, and none reports Russian confirmation of involvement in the Leipzig, Yahodyn or Baltic-region incidents.
- No source explains how the reported suspicious fires at defence facilities from Italy to Estonia relate to France or to the measures Macron announced.
- ABC News Australia — original
- Arab News — by Arab News
- BBC News — by Robert Greenall
Read the original at ABC News Australia